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| RingGo, the newly launched replacement phone parking service for Milton Keynes, is proving a great success. In the first two weeks of service motorists demonstrated their willingness to undertake the switch, with the cashless parking income generated by RingGo 17 per cent higher than the levels achieved a month before under the previous supplier. With both the user base and income levels continuing to grow, the move to RingGo appears a good decision for the Council. RingGo was introduced as a payment option in Milton Keynes for premium parking bays on 1 November, replacing a previously offered service. Cashless parking has been re-provisioned after three years as a result of a competitive tendering process. With parking income generated cashlessly already exceeding previous levels of use and hundreds of new users joining each day, growth looks set to continue. The base of "repeat" users (motorists that have previously used RingGo) is also positive with levels currently showing a week on week increase of 21 per cent. Motorists have taken well to the change. Local businesswoman Julia Doherty, founder of "Green Umbrella", came across the service whilst shopping in Milton Keynes and was so impressed with her experience of parking via the RingGo iPhone app that she felt compelled to write about it on her website ("Genius. an app for parking your car #RingGo"). She blogs "If you are a bit like me and never have any change for parking then you are going to love this app!" Commercial Director for RingGo, Harry Clarke, comments "RingGo has been the phone parking system of choice of nearby towns such as Luton, Bedford, Banbury and Oxford for some time. We were therefore confident that RingGo would be popular in Milton Keynes. Even so, we have been surprised by quite how much usage there has been. Following a change of service, you might well expect a slight dip in revenues while motorists get used to paying with the alternative system. But here, even in the first two weeks of service, parking income has surpassed that achieved by the previous supplier by more than 17 per cent. Based on our experience elsewhere, we would expect the Council to see that positive trend continue upwards." Sara Bailey, Parking Strategy and Implementation Manager for Milton Keynes says of the changeover "We are pleased to see that our citizens and visitors to the City are choosing to use RingGo so readily. Re-provisioning a front-line service such as this requires careful planning and liaison but we were aware of the strong reputation of the company and reassured that RingGo had the right resources and experience to do this. The transfer has gone extremely smoothly and motorists obviously like using RingGo so we are planning to implement RingGo more widely across the Borough. We couldn't be more pleased." |
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